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Is it just me or does each year seem to go by more quickly than the last? For the majority of digital marketers that’s arguably truer than for anyone else – at least it feels that way. No doubt that’s due in some part to the all the hats we’re wearing.

This lack of time and resources for so many marketers is exactly why now is the best time to get a head start on planning your email marketing strategy for 2015.

We could easily come up with a list of 10 or more resolutions for the new year, but really they can all be distilled down to just one – identify what worked and what didn’t in 2014 to inform and prioritize your strategy in 2015.

If you’re responsible for email marketing at your e-commerce or retail company – run, don’t walk, into your boss’s office and demand your well-deserved bonus. When she asks how you’ve suddenly become so empowered just explain the new reality of holiday sales.

Black Friday is no longer just the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. With earlier offers and more online sales, Black Friday is now generally considered the period from Thanksgiving Thursday through the following Sunday.

Despite having a longer period this year, the New York Times estimates that shoppers visiting stores and websites spent 11% less, from $57.4 billion to $50.9 billion. So far, retailers seem to be at a loss to explain the unexpected downturn.

We just got back from Digital East 2013, a conference in Washington, D.C., and our brains and notes are brimming with digital marketing tips and ideas.

As we saw throughout the conference, email remains among the most effective and measurable digital marketing channels.

As one speaker put it, at any given conference, when a social media session and an email session start at the same time, that means there's the room where people care about conversions and ROI and measuring success. And then there's the social media room. (Just kidding. As we recently noted, social and email do and should work hand-in-hand.)

If you haven’t started working on it yet, stop what you’re doing and get on it. For most consumer-focused organizations, the end-of the-year holiday season is the most important opportunity to drive revenue. And year after year, email marketing is simply unbeatable when it comes to driving sales, earning donations or engaging with your audience.

As Bloomberg News reported last holiday season: “Even as retailers debate the efficacy of social-media marketing on Facebook and Twitter, they have no doubts about the power of a decades-old technology to drive sales. The killer app is called email.” As we noted this summer, email remains the most cost-effective digital marketing channel for driving sales.

Whether your organization is dependent on donations or a sales cycle, the last several weeks of the year are a crucial time to engage subscribers with email marketing. You already know that. And so does every other marketer in the world who is planning holiday email campaigns.

So to help you stand out and get noticed, we present our top holiday email tips.